Alfred Paul Ries (November 14, 1926 – October 7, 2022) was an American marketing professional and author.

Along with Jack Trout, Ries is credited with resurrecting the idea of "positioning" in the field of marketing.

[2] Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1926, Ries graduated from DePauw University as a mathematics major in 1950.

[8] The themes discussed in that series of articles inspired their later book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, published in 1981.

[7] Ries wrote an article for AdWeek that centered around the historical failure of converged devices, Why the iPhone will fail, published in 2007.